A DIY Recipe for Giant Hexagonal Ice Crystals

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

Corrections etc: [None yet! Find stuff that's wrong and let me know!] Extra special thanks to Steve Mould for a fantastic explanation of the thermoelectric effect! (and giving my channel a shoutout way back when this project was in its infancy) Check it out: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hWfakpx7mr13fdE

[@MultiPleaser]

I don't think the heat sink and peltier junction are thermally bonded. They are physically bonded with pressure from the nuts and bolts on the bracket you made. The instructions for using thermal compound between a CPU and heat sink say to use a single drop in the center and pressing the two together while keeping them parallel. That way all air bubbles are avoided and you won't overheat a micro spot on your CPU. (I've done this for two, old, used computers, which never burned out a CPU. They eventually failed when the mother boards developed problems.) I cringed when I saw the wavvy blob full of ridges of air on your heat sink.

[@daven6910]

At 9:30 you use the "KZbin Premier countdown" music. Those of us who watch premiers have grown to hate it! I automatically reached for the mute button. Not your fault. Otherwise a great video.

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

@multipleaser That was not the way it actually ran - I did it the right way, with a small blob smeared out with pressure - i even filmed it from up close with a macro lens to get the squish, but somehow that footage got lost, and I ended up with a clip of that gross blob from early in the process (note that it had two peltiers on that one too), and that clip itself was ALREADY a recreation, which is why there was an awful blob on top of already flat stuff.... sorry it was cringey - i agree!

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

@dave ,N - oh no! - I used that audio on one of my favorite timelapses - sucks that it has picked up a bad connotation...

[@Shipfish]

I would like to know if single crystal ice has a more or less satisfying crunch than regular ice. I think that would be a delightful followup to this video!

[@storminmormin14]

I work in the vacuums lab at a university physics department. You are a monster for what you did to that pump.

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

I had to change the oil multiple times - it was super groady after getting mixed with water... I just bought “food grade” mineral oil too cause it was cheap. Not sure about the viscosity but the pump didn’t seem to mind xD

[@usmguy1234]

You should see what happens to one when filtering solids washed in diethyl-ether in an enclosed fume hood cabinet. Needless to say the fume hood was sashless and the undergrads were not allowed to use the vacuum pump again...or the new one rather.

[@LevySkulk]

@@AlphaPhoenixChannel very late to this, but companies like Harvest Rite sell oil-less vacuum pumps for use with their freeze dryers. I use them at work, very low maintenance and can handle hundreds of cycles

[@dangoldbach6570]

Try shell turbo 68 steam turbine oil. I use it in my Welsh capture pumps when recovering refrigerant from chillers. It gets milky but it's got the highest water tolerance I have found so far

[@usmguy1234]

@@dangoldbach6570 can confirm, gst 68 is good shit.

[@Ornateluna]

I remember when about half a year ago I googled pictures of single ice crystals but at best I could find some research papers on growing them, so this series has really scratched an itch of mine about ice crystals

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

most of the research is about tiny ones - it frustrated me nobody has tried this scale before! I know I could have made more impressive ones with real lab equipment

[@LC-sc3en]

Someone I know just texted me a picture of a drink they froze that had formed a pattern of concentric hexagons on its surface. It was wild! This video is the closest I was able to get to an explanation of how likely it was to occur.

[@nairb118]

I appreciate the Kerbal Space Program music in the intro!

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

Haha is that Kerbal music too? Cool! It's a really common royalty-free song (at least I use it a lot) Arcadia - Wonders by Kevin MacLeod

[@nairb118]

@@AlphaPhoenixChannel Neat to hear that's where they got it! Kerbal uses that music once you escape atmosphere and start orbiting. Kinda makes sense they would use royalty free, I don't think the original developer expected much commercial success.

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

I've always been scared to start playing Kerbal, lest I loose the time to do anything else.

[@ronwesilen4536]

@@AlphaPhoenixChannel you should definitely sell your life to the kerbal overlords. I did it and I'm happy for that

[@TimTomHarry]

I believe the song is also in Fable 3

[@flirkami]

4:20 that Transition was daamn smooth!

[@Scanlaid]

Little bit of tv magic for ya. I oohed and aahed like the emeril live studio audience

[@1.4142]

Fooled me. Also the timestamp lmao

[@turun_ambartanen]

You mean him grabbing the other dish?

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

Shhhh

[@turun_ambartanen]

@@AlphaPhoenixChannel Gotta say though, that was amazingly done! I watched that part at least 20 times to make sure ;)

[@Purpleturtlehurtler]

The joyous laughter of a scientist doing what his 5th grade self wanted to always do himself brings me life.

[@kernelle4]

What can I say, the man loves a good vaccuum

[@recurvestickerdragon]

Technology Connections would have a field day with how many consecutive heat pumps are used in the cooling

[@SirFloIII]

Really connecting them technologies

[@basedyoshi7253]

I see you're a man of culture as well

[@JNCressey]

I think 'heat pump' only refers to devices using the refrigeration cycle. The general term being 'reverse heat engine' for a device that takes work and moves heat.

[@puddlejumper3259]

Dude I love your delivery at the beginning: "Really cool hexagonal ice cubes. I don't mean cool thermally but they will also be that" Was the most amazingly nerdy thing I think I've heard anyone say

[@4LO4LO]

Just a suggestion, if you ever need degassed water again, you could degas your water by keeping it just below the boiling point for a long time (ideally for a day or two). Then you could boil some of the water off, rig steam to your peltier chamber, then vent your peltier chamber (at net positive pressure) to atmosphere to ensure it is filled only with steam (by displacement/dilution). Degas complete without potentially harming your pump. Either way, you got the results you are looking for. Good job. This was a really educational and fascinating video, and you are a good storyteller.

[@KX36]

Don't let CGP Grey fool you, wetsagons are the real bestagons.

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

"Hexagons are the Bestagons" is a really fantastic video though. After I saw that, I spent the next two weeks inhaling every CGP Grey video I could find

[@jek__]

isnt that vihart

[@archevenault]

@@jek__ Nah vihart is hexaflexagon

[@purdysanchez]

Never on my life did think I would ever be so fascinated about using applied physics to try and achieve unadulterated lattice structures, but your videos are just too good. Well done.

[@wbeaty]

The MIT underwater snowflake machine for years was on display at the Museum of Science in Boston. Two of them! (so, as one was melting and re-chilling, the other was making snowflakes.) I was the tech manager there at the time. Each was a flat cell of supercooled water, mounted vertically, w/side lighting against black background, (with glycol cooling for rapid temp changes,) plus a 1cm coldfinger near the top, to produce a large excursion and nucleate some seed crystals. As they fell, the dense seeds grew to thin snowflakes up to 30mm wide, piling up at the bottom of the water-cell.

[@joshuamurray9112]

“You must preheat your freezer to -20 Celsius” Hmmm

[@oneilmw]

Welcome to Cooking with AlphaPhoenix!

[@cope9489]

People living in Siberia:

[@cursedcliff7562]

Pre-Heated (relative to absolute zero :p)

[@eamonia]

I guess he going by the Kelvin standard.

[@AlanZucconi]

Very nice! ❄️ I've been having a lot of issues myself with Peltier modules when I was trying to build a mini fridge/incubator for ants! I made an oven instead. 😅

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

OOOOOOOH man yes that was my experience. heat removal is a PAIN

[@eamonia]

Oh no! I bet they were like, "Why God, why? What have we done to displease you?" And the little Job ant was like, "No, it's cool guys. We should still kiss his ass." And then you stepped in and said, "Shut up you stupid ants, God isn't real."

[@ssholum]

Very cool seeing those hexagons finally! Reminds me of when I learned about the process for making monocrystaline silicon wafers. The nano-scale doping process for making devices was also cool, but there's something amazing about taking a tiny seed crystal and pulling a giant bullion out of molten material.

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

I’d love to see a bulk 14” silicon boule in person one day

[@IainMcClatchie]

@@AlphaPhoenixChannel SunEdison had one in their lobby a few years ago. 20 feet long! That's 4000 wafers or so. Silicon is zone refined, which I think means they melt a cylinder of it from one end to the other while pulling heat out both ends. My understanding is that for this to work, the silicon would have to solidify as a single crystal, otherwise they'd collect impurities in the grain boundaries. So that suggests there are two ways used to make single crystals, the Czochralsky method but also this simpler freezing in the zone refining container. Or is zone refining done with the Czochralsky pull at the top? If not, why bother with the Czochralsky method? They need to align the crystal orientation to the boule axis, so that the wafer can have a single crystalline face. Maybe the zone refining process doesn't give control over the crystal axes. I wonder if there is something you can do with zone refined water that wouldn't work in presence of even tiny amounts of impurities. I can't think of one myself, which makes demonstrating zone refined ice less interesting.

[@namibjDerEchte]

@@IainMcClatchie zone melting refines the purity because the dirt will travel along with the melt zone preferentially, rather than crystallizing out. Essentially sorta like freeze-distilling.

[@MouZ245]

Thanks, KZbin-algorythm! I watch videos about squirrels and am into science, too. Yesterday youtube decided to show me a video from Steve Mould talking about how squirrels cache acorns and how acorns use that to reproduce effectively. That video brought me here (since I liked it). Now that (at 6:35 ) Steve Mould gets mentioned I finally know how I got here.

[@russellking747]

Pro-tip: Ever noticed that large crystals are usually produced in a liquid bath? PRo-Pro-tip: why don't you just seed a crystal on demand? I accidentally did this once - funnily enough using a peltier the other way around: I had a sodium acetate heat pack, and wanted to measure the temperature point at which the seed clicker stopped producing seed crystals - I was using a peltier as a heater to accurately maintain the temperature of the heat pack, as regulating the thermal output of a peltier can be done slowly by setting the power electrically and make quick adjustments by varying the temperature of the cold side (with another peltier); I found that I was getting a large single crystal at around the 56°C mark (it took ages), rather than the dentral slush that usually forms. I could not get a crystal at all above 57°, although this could have been error in my temperature sensing (I was using a schottky diode as the sensor and crude temperature readings from several sources to map the voltage drop to a temperature gradient). The most prominent result from this is that I didn't see dendral formations if I regulated the temperature of the sodium acetate within a couple of degrees below its freezing point. I also noticed that spawning the seed crystal often resulted in a single crystal - maybe because of the very low probability at the temperatures I was doing this at. This video reminded me of that experiment. Maybe this could be better way of getting a single ice crystal? The method: Supercool pure water to a couple of degrees below zero, spawn a seed, and regulate temperature as close to below freezing as possible - note that this is somewhat self-regulating, due to the supercooled freezing effectively raising the temperature of the medium as the ice forms - you only have to keep the liquid bath temperature constant and slightly below freezing. Just a thought, hope it helps.

[@charliesteiner2334]

Vacuum pump tip: run the water vapor through a cold trap before it goes to the pump. The "cold trap" can just be a part of the tube that you dunk in a dry ice ethanol bath, but that will get clogged easy - better trap geometries can require brazing tubes into bigger tubes though.

[@VoidHalo]

I'm glad I stumbled on this video again. I've recently been growing crystals from different chemicals. Nothing fancy, calcium acetate, sodium acetate, salt, calcium carbonate, citric acid, which makes very nice crystals. But I could never get them more than about 1cm at the largest. I'm more or less trying to do this "discovery style" just exploring and discovering it all on my own without reading anything (or very much) about it. I think even though it's about ice, the principles in this video could be applied to my own crystal growing attempts.

[@antivanti]

A note on freezers. While they can achieve a decent difference in temperature between inside and outside they can only move a certain amount of heat per unit of time so if you try to cool a heat source with a bigger output of heat than that it will eventually just act as a big insulated box that gets warmer and warmer. This is why you cannot cool a gaming PC in the freezer. Kind of like how your initial insufficiently cooled stack of peltier elements ended up heating rather than cooling 😊👍

[@stefanheimersheim]

You're making amazing videos! Your fun with just doing things, and the spirit of a grad student, it's awesome! Edit: Are you still grad student? Not sure, was one of your older vids maybe

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

soon to not be :)

[@krmr]

Getting strong Breaking Bad vibes.. a garage, jugs, contraptions on a table, tarp covering stuff up, the Hawaiian shirt. Cooking up 'ice' 😂

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

Gotta get myself a Winnebago just for chemistry videos...

[@krmr]

@@AlphaPhoenixChannel You probably already got the necessary glassware, but If you then start growing ice and other crystals in an RV.. we know where that leads.

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

filmed through a clear table last night

[@RaderGH]

People: 'There are no straight lines in nature' Nature: 'Hold my solid water'

[@laughterman805]

Meh.

[@bytesandbikes]

This project is fascinating. I especially like the adsorption cooler driven with a peltier cooler!

[@Tomkat53]

You're such an outstanding nerd scientist! I love every moment watching this channel!

[@StormBurnX]

I feel like we have a new "Ben at Applied Science" on youtube and I'm so incredibly excited about this.

[@KingSharpeMan]

That's why I always tell people ice is a natural mineral. It occurs naturally, it has a definite composition, it has a crystaline structure it is not organic, and it's a solid. We put rocks in our soda!

[@TlalocTemporal]

I mean, we already put rocks in our soda. That's why it's called soda -- sodium bicarbonate, which we can get as nahcolite, or crystallizing it out of mineral springs. Also, some drinks have salt, so that's three minerals in drinks. Glass too if your clumsy! :p

[@Goodgu3963]

4:25 that jump cut was SMOOOOOOTH lol nicely done

[@nicktohzyu]

if you don't need a large temperature delta across the peltier, it's far more effective to get a higher current rated peltier (eg the 12715) and undervolt it

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

Interesting point! I just bought something cheap - maybe that was a bad plan...

[@ViiKing_]

Haha, jokes on you, I already watched Steve Mould's video ages ago!

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

I mean most of you probably came direct from his channel - there’s not a lot I can do to repay his favor...

[@ViiKing_]

@@AlphaPhoenixChannel I don't remember how I found you but your content is awesome nevertheless

[@jonathanacuna]

I love that you have visuals for everything your talking about. Makes it simple to follow along 😄🙏🏼

[@torinireland6526]

Your dry humor in the intro was hilarious :) Great work!

[@genuinedickies99]

Water vapor atmosphere... What an odd way to drown. And thank you for sharing, that water crystal was neat. I bet a shear off of it would look crazy.

[@1.4142]

Somewhere out there, aliens make jewelry out of ice.

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

Fun to think about. Wonder what kinds of “biological” reactions could exist at very low temperatures by earth-life standards?

[@max_kl]

Those would probably also be rather slow-moving aliens

[@1PoodleKing1]

Awesome video! Been waiting for this since Steve Mould's video came out. Worth the wait. Really interested in part 2. It would be cool to give a brief explanation of why it grows in steps and ledges. I'm not entirely clear on whether this is a single crystal, of if it's a polycrystalline with the basal planes all oriented in the same direction

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

It’s a single crystal it’s just cut at an inconvenient angle so it zigzags with facets. There’s a graphic to explain that I just put together for the next video. I was REALLY hoping that I angled the camera and the light correctly once to see the “step flow” growth and the. Nucleation of new islands on top but unfortunately none of them were so perfect

[@live4twilight4ever]

not to be a huge nerd but the drow in the legend of drizzt books, back when they had infravision, used what i now recognize as magical versions of peltier coolers to signal each other over long distances in the dark and i think that's pretty cool

[@TachyonAnnihilator]

Reminds me of when I went to Iceland. We passed a frozen waterfall, and a chunk had fallen and smashed weeks prior. One piece had a wonderful tessellated hexagon pattern. Really beautiful chunk of ice. I only now know what I really saw... and I'm sorry to say this man... but mother nature 1 upped you. You got out done by iceland's wonderful seasons xD

[@useazebra]

Great video! As i understand it, attempting to grow a single crystal is really tricky, imvolving a lot of effort to maintain the right concentration of available atom, ions, or molecules PLUS the right pressure PLUS the right temperature,and possibly sometimes the right electrical charge. As near as I can tell, the people who have figured out ways of depositing perfect crystals of interesting substances (diamond, sapphire, lithium flouride used in JWST lenses) guard their secrets pretty tightly.

[@ding0172]

Been directed here, wasn't sure to subscribe until I saw the shirt, it definitely deserves a subscription!

[@dangoldbach6570]

Found this channel when I was researching sputter coating for a camera lens project...yeah... Nuts, but, whatever. This channel is great! Subscribed! My thoughts on this so far, de-gassing the water and the distillation process is giving you a beautifully pure crystal of water, brilliant use of the peltier waste heat! Second, run your vacuum line through molecular sieve, it will save your vacuum pump. An activated carbon trap will also scavenge excess N2 and O2 also if you leave it connected to the vacuum chamber.... I think! But, your experience in molecular epitaxy chambers is probably going to give you a far better grasp on this than I!!! 😂

[@Scrogan]

Very nice work! The thermal loop and the filling of the chamber with water vapour is a very elegant solution. I remember suggesting trying to use a pettier to grow a crystal from liquid water in the last video, but that would require a setup more complicated than this one. Crystal growth might be different in nature though. Only suggestion I have now is to add a tiny camera (like from a raspi or USB/laptop webcam) inside the freezer to get a time lapse. But I’ve no idea if a CCD would work at those temperatures, not to mention in a vacuum chamber.

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

I tried just submerging the peltier in water in the vacuum chamber instead of only partially filling the chamber and never saw any facets (despite what the literature told me...) And don't worry - I have PLENTY of timelapse of growing crystal set to release. I'm really pleased with it - I put the whole big mirrorless camera in the freezer for like multiple weeks total. I think i'm going to release a very short "how to film in the freezer" follow up video as a technical interest

[@asdfadfafsdfa]

This channel will be huge sooner than we realize

[@Raraoolala]

Where's the (timelapse) shot from the whole contraption in the freezer with the Sony camera looking through that glass?

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

Editing a supercut of those lapses as we speak! Soon...

[@ronwesilen4536]

This is pretty amazing. Very good work! I hope you channel gets big soon. Have you seen the community tab exploit? Maybe that can help, who knows.

[@clarity7699]

This gave me an eyegasm thank you

[@GodlikeIridium]

That is so cool! The crystal looked absolutely amazing!

[@YodaWhat]

*Cold Traps. USE THEM!* Why not prevent most of the water vapor from ever reaching the vacuum pump? Simple to make, easy to use: a coil of soft copper tubing inserted into the vacuum hose between pump and chamber, with the coil immersed into a container of dry ice drowned in alcohol. It is only needed for the few minutes it takes to de-gas the vacuum chamber. Virtually all the water vapor headed for the pump gets intercepted and frozen onto the inside of the coil, leaving very little water for the pump to contend with. Water in the chamber can be de-gassed in advance by boiling it for 15 minutes. U-shaped tubes (preferably loosely stuffed with metal wool) can be used instead of copper coil, and several can be put in parallel for extra capacity. If it is necessary to use _hard copper_ tubing or other material you don't want to bend, the U-shapes can be soldered together from straight sections and elbows. U-tubes are easily made that will fit inside a normal Thermos-type bottle if a cryo-dewar is not available. Also, a warmer (but still cold) trap can be used for low vacuum work with water vapor. A trap at about zero degrees F can be used to capture most of the water vapor before it reaches the dry ice trap. Zero °F is easily achieved by pouring rock salt over ice cubes. Slightly colder can be achieved with salts other than NaCl. When large amounts of water vapor must be intercepted, consider adding extra pathways (and volume) in the bottom of U-tubes by making a sort of ladder from tees, with elbows only at the bottom. That will prevent liquid 'slugging' towards the pump if the elbows get filled up with liquid. For water vapor in high vacuum, use a dry ice cold trap followed by a trap chilled with liquid nitrogen. The vapor pressure of H2O at LN2 temperature is extremely low... consider the icy moons in the outer solar system that have not sublimed away even after billions of years.

[@jonathanfeller]

I was looking forward to this video! Thank you for the awesome content! :-)

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

You’re welcome! Glad you like the channel! There’s a pt. 2 to this one too - watch out

[@johnpossum556]

Excellent video to release today. We've just had -23C and we're going to get colder!

[@andie_pants]

9:30 I have a pavlovian response to this music to run and grab a beer or go pee real quick because the premier is about to begin!

[@JesusSportsNature]

Hexagonal prisms so cool!

[@CKOD]

1 / 18 crystalline phases done! Ice II, Ice III next?

[@laughterman805]

Ice nine

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

I briefly googled how difficult it would be to build a diamond anvil cell a few days ago, but unfortunately the answer is "pretty hard"

[@xXRickTrolledXx]

3:26 to 3:33 is was really well delivered and edited. Good belly laugh.

[@Techischannel]

A Dish that turns whiter and whiter the colder it gets?! THATS MEGA COOL!

[@miamatti]

OHHH yea Im so Fricken stoked to find this channel!!!!!!

[@seeigecannon]

Heh, I have a turbo vac pump at home that I was using for freezedrying (hey, overkill works). My failed experiments included burned ice cream and burned popsicles, but the giant Lucky Charms... er, marshmellows, turned out great.

[@RiffZifnab]

Best ice cubes found! (:

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

the bestagons?

[@RiffZifnab]

@@AlphaPhoenixChannel Exactly (: Needs a better name than "ice cube" though. BestaHexaIceAgon?

[@eitanseitchik3020]

Here from Steve Mould! You got a subscriber!

[@philipcox5859]

it is crazy how underrated you are, u need more subs man

[@superdupergrover9857]

You'll want to get a chest freezer. Technology Connections did a video on it, basically, they are just WAY better than stand up freezers because cold air sinks and chest freezers have the door on the top. Also, you'll have way more space for filming.

[@TlalocTemporal]

That only matters if you're opening the freezer to get things. Since this is running for a week, the only risk is short temperature jumps, but there should be plenty of thermal mass in the water and metal there.

[@SnizzyDeeFTW]

N-ice video, I'm enjoying the mini series on ice crystals

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

groanupvote :)

[@MrDavePed]

One very special morning I was driving home at sunrise. The crystals were covering all the golden autumn trees as far as I could see. Not ordinary crystals, these were paper thin crystals the size of silver dollars covering everything. The sun was rising into a clear blue sky and the effect was absolutely dazzling. If I only had a camera with me at the time. ..

[@nova5303]

I see you tried out some fancy editing in this video. Nice!

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

I've been trying to weave more and more in - it's a lot of fun. one of my favorites was the "random machine" video from last year (I think last year?) where the whole intro is a conversation with my digital clone :)

[@timothysands5537]

This guy is awesome 👌👏😎 Great work ethic too for sticking with this.

[@brettkalfas5012]

This has Bill Nye vibes and I love it.

[@wilfredswinkels]

YAY you made hackaday!! congrats!! :-D

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

Thanks!

[@6Twisted]

Can this method be used to create super strong metal? It's my understanding that metal is much weaker than it should be because of grain boundaries and impurities?

[@krishorst4734]

Well this is sort of like getting 1000 people to join together and hold hands and say its the biggest person ever.

[@57thorns]

Loved the ending, "densified marshmallows are disgusting". Sometime the grownups actually had a point when they told you not to do things as a kid. And sometimes, you shouldn't do those things even as an adult. A kid should neither drink nor drive, an adult can do both, not just at the same time. Also: Not drinking and driving goes for water as well, if you need a sip of water as a driver, you need a break as well.

[@timehunter9467]

I recognise that music you used, I think I’ve heard it in a Ratchet and Clank game. Great video too.

[@3RaccoonsInATank]

4:30 i though that was some kind wizardry CGI and was trying to find how it was done. after about 5 or 10 min of that i realized there was a second dish in there the whole time

[@orad3093]

Recently my friend and me noticed that her whole pool was frozen over with near perfect hexagonal ice (maybe like 1cm diameter) why is that? And how can it happen?

[@petergoestohollywood382]

Chance

[@orad3093]

@@petergoestohollywood382 but like whats the scientific explanation

[@boobrowsky]

Interesting amount of dedication to creating single hail ball :P

[@stonedandhammered]

do you think you could grow a single ice crystal using organic recrystallization techniques? like what if you "dissolved" a small amount of water in some aniline or something and cooled it to below zero, maybe -10C. use the minimal amount necessary of aniline to dissolve some ice, then put it in a small, unsealed vial. place the vial in a large container filled with some antisolvent, maybe ether or something miscible with aniline but generally immiscible with water and seal it. allow the antisolvent to diffuse into the solvent slowly and cause ice crystals to precipitate out. maybe this temperature or solvent/antisolvent pair might not work but maybe there is something similar that could be done.

[@michaelmolter6180]

Peltier junctions are roughly 10% efficient. If you want to move 10W away from something cold, you need to dissipate roughly 110W on the hot side (10W + 10W / 10%). This means in the second stage / layer, you'd need to dissipate 1210 W! Just to move that tiny 10W from the first layer cold side!

[@zachsprat9977]

Kinda reminds me of etched phenakite crystals. This is so dope duuuude.

[@objective_psychology]

Wouldn't it work best with extremely pure distilled water? Fewer nucleation sites

[@princetbug]

9:35 were you aware that that music is used for KZbin Premiers when you made this?

[@ivanbravo6986]

This guy is like the chemistry teacher version of engineering explained 😂

[@trevorgray3681]

I thought I was the only one lol. He even sounds similar

[@zeroproductionvalue3993]

This would be an amazing super fancy whiskey ball

[@ChronicSkooma]

Literally a hundred dollar ice cube.

[@DanielLCarrier]

What I've been wondering about is using a pressure chamber to shrink marshmallows, wait until they get back to normal size, then take them out and eat them while they're giant. But I've never been able to do this myself due to a combination of lack of equipment and not liking marshmallows.

[@killerbee.13]

You can't take them out while they're giant because taking them out requires first repressurizing them (or, I suppose, depressurizing the outside to a vacuum too but it's hard to eat marshmallows while suffocating in a vacuum. Or so I'm led to believe) which is what shrivels them. It's not a time-based thing or anything like that.

[@JoshuaDoss]

I am really liking these. More please

[@BlackHeartScyther]

Hmm, wonder what would happen if you introduced different frequencies of sound or 'projected positive thoughts' towards it while it froze (apparently sticking notes with positive words does the same thing lol) Water has been shown to grown different patterns based on its emotional environment.

[@h2amster328]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who calls ice "frozen water."

[@daxroger3075]

One thing to know is this can hurt you freezer. Freezers are made to maintain a old temperature buy turning on and off. But not to work against a continuous heat source so it could break the freezer.

[@Xnoob545]

3:16 this chart is interesting So you're telling me if I pump up the pressure to like 100 gigapascals and heat up the ice to like 300C°, it won't melt? And at low pressure it'll go straight to gas at like -50C°?

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

Yup

[@ploobooble1141]

Ah, the lovely sound of reaching space in ksp

[@BirbYus]

the bowl changing color joke just won me over :^ I now subscribe

[@CrooningRevival365]

Dude you deserve so many more views.

[@JohnDlugosz]

Could you use silver nitrate as a seed? That is, something that more readily forms perfect crystals of the proper shape and size to serve as a pattern. I believe silver nitrate is used for cloud seeding because it has this property.

[@pirateswiggity5278]

This reminds me of vapor deposit gold crystals. I’m 90% certain it’s the same basic principle but the specific process is probably different though.

[@nitroadshadow4667]

9:00 hey you might want to attach a gas trap or a drying column going from your vacuum chamber to the pump.

[@s1nningjezus207]

That was great. Thank you!

[@benruniko]

I know this is an old video and project, but i wonder; could we have tried growing ice crystals super slowly inside another fluid with a much lower freezing point as though we were trying to recrystallize any other chemical from a solution? We could add a seed crystal and go just below freezing so the process is very slow? Perhaps the bonds between water molecules are too weak for that? I dunno

[@prajna_meher]

Fantastic!. Is there any way this type of structures can be formed in metals. Just curious 🤔. Chiao

[@BlueButtonMasher]

this makes me appreciate the set design of superman 2

[@prdoyle]

Ooooh good choice of music. Creeper World!

[@mk6595]

Would purifying the water help this?...By removing the impurities that would cause nucleation sites?

[@peter-klausnikolaus4823]

A quick tip: put more vacuum into the chamber!

[@eamonia]

What!? Dude, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen anyone do with water ice. Except that thing my ol' lady does but that's none of your business...